1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a shoulder cradle for supporting a cellular car phone on the shoulder of the user of the car phone so that the user's hands are free.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is well known to provide various types of shoulder supports for standard telephone handsets so that the users of the standard telephone handsets have their hands free to take messages, to do work at their desks, or perform similar activities while talking on the telephone. The standard telephone handset has a gently curved hand piece with an earphone at one end and a mouthpiece at the other end. The shoulder supports for those handsets are generally attached to the gently curved hand piece of the handset.
It is also well known to provide shoulder supports for telephone handsets that have pivoting portions to fold the shoulder supports against the handset when not in use. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,141,072, 3,582,574, and U.S. Design Pat. No. 224,543 all disclose shoulder supports for telephone handsets that are pivotally connected to the handsets so that they may be positioned against the handsets when not in use.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,056,862, 3,163,722, 3,830,987 and 4,058,689 all disclose relatively elaborate shoulder supports for telephone handsets that may be utilized with standard telephones.
The shoulder supports that can be utilized with standard conventional telephone handsets are generally not adaptable to car phones. The cellular car phones that have been utilized in recent years consist of a hand held unit which has a dial keyboard on one surface and has an earphone and a mouthpiece on the opposite surface of the unit so that the dial keyboard occupies the position to which conventional shoulder supports are commonly attached. Even though the ability to converse over a car phone without the driver holding it is more critical than is hands-off operation of a conventional telephone handset, the arrangement of parts to provide a shoulder cradle for a car phone is complicated by the structure of the car phone since accommodations must be made to permit access to the dial keyboard of the car phone while, at the same time, permitting that area to be occupied by the shoulder cradle when conversing on the car phone.
There is, therefore, a need for a shoulder cradle that can be utilized with a car phone to permit the driver of a vehicle to converse over the car phone while, at the same time, having both hands free.